


Scheherazade in Colonial Times

by That_Ghost_Kristoff



Series: a storyteller at the fiddler's green [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Animal Death, Asexual Character, Backstory, Español | Spanish, Français | French, Historical Accuracy, Multilingual Character, POV John Silver, Silver Met Flint as a Child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 17:30:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7517030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Silver's formed in a back alley in London not far from the docks. The name's a first lie in a long line of many, until it seems he was never anyone else at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scheherazade in Colonial Times

**Author's Note:**

> There is actual, untranslated Spanish and French in this, but you can figure out what the dialogue is from context. I admittedly used Google translate for French because I don't trust my meager knowledge of it enough to actually write even a few lines of dialogue.
> 
> I also want to say that people aged a lot faster back then. So, he's younger than he is in some fics.

Juan Plata is seven when war comes to the Spanish seas and Señor Andres adds English to the school day lessons.

In their own distant way, he and the other children of Seville know the War of Succession is a serious matter, but that’s an adult concern. Instead, it rapidly becomes absorbed in their Saturday morning games, when there are no lessons to worry about or guardians to watch them. Juan joins with the other boys from El Real Colegio Seminario de San Telmo to meet with the girls from La Casa de Niñas Huérfanas and the sons and daughters of local townsfolk on the banks of the Guadalquivir del Río to play Spanish and Grand Alliance. The Sevillian summer heat swells around them, sunlight sparkling across the water, and it isn’t long before the children are stripped of their shoes and jackets, running barefoot along the shores and shrieking in broken English or French.

As San Telmo’s objective is to teach orphan boys the seaman’s trade, they play the victorious Spanish. “ _Por la victoria!_ ” Jorge, one of the oldest boys, says from his place on the bench in front of the purple hydrangea bush. He’d look impressive in his navy-style, school day uniform if it weren’t for the patch on the elbow and the uncut, shaggy state of his dirty brown hair. “ _V_ _ictoria por Seville, mis hombres._ ”

“For England!” the son of the cobbler says, and they attack on cue.

San Telmo doesn’t accept boys younger than seven, so Juan is the smallest of them, and goes unnoticed. He runs after Irma, one of his friends from the sister orphanage, whose green cotton dress flutters around her shins. There’s a blue ribbon in her curls, marking her as English. “ _Para_ ,” he says as the gust of wind blows, his call for a halt drowned by the protesting roar of the disturbed river and the others’ shouts. His brown curls blow loose across his face, obscuring his vision. “ _Para en el nombre de España!_ ”

From the hydrangea shaded bench, Jorge calls orders to his soldiers like the _Almirante_ he’ll never grow up to be. Orphan boys, even those from San Telmo, don’t rise much higher than _Sargento_. The cobbler’s son attempts to imitate him, but his English vocabulary is limited, and his pride too strong to switch to Spanish now. Irma laughs, and dashes under the stone bridge, splashing the shallows, before circling around and up. Though Juan nearly slips, he follows, and they leave behind a trail of watery footprints that evaporate as quickly as they form in the late morning sun.

The air’s dense from humidity and the smell of flowers and river rot. At the top of the bridge, he stops to catch his breath, limbs shaking from the strain and lungs protesting the exertion. Seville stretches out around them, a tangled mess of cobblestone streets and stucco buildings with wrought iron balconies crawling with leafy plants. Irma stops as well, and leans back against the railing. Sweat sticks her hair to her face. Her dress clings to her body. At the base of the bridge, Alfonso, the glazier’s second son, catches up to the oldest orphan girl, Katarina, catching her around the waist. She kicks out as he twirls her, green skirts billowing, thin face brightened by laughter as she shouts, “ _Misericordia, misericordia!”_

“I have you,” Irma says through short breaths, her crooked smile revealing equally crooked, gapped teeth. Her hair’s pale for a Spanish girl’s, not brown like Katarina or Jorge or Juan, and during the height of the summer, her skin burns like an aristocrat’s. “Win for English.”

“ _Nunca_ ,” he says, but doesn’t try to run. “ _Nunca rendiremos._ ”

Jorge and the older boys capture the cobbler’s son from the honeysuckle spilling over the water, and claim victory for Spain. It’s the summer of 1702, war’s just come to Spain, and Juan can’t imagine any life but this.

 

 

Two years after the war starts and just months after the siege of Gibraltar, Juan purposely steps aboard the wrong ship for his observational lessons, and sails to the Spanish Netherlands as a stowaway. After just a few days in the naval shipyard, he realizes what a terrible plan this was, because the people don’t take kindly to his accent or olive skin or dark curls. Señor Andres was wrong when he said the people of the territory love Spain, so after a few scrapes with the local boys, he hops aboard another ship and hopes to dock somewhere better than here.

Instead, he arrives in London.

Juan grew up half-wild, half-civilized as a silversmith’s orphaned son, flitting between the Sevillian streets with its childish, play-acted wars, and the San Telmo maritime lessons, but the constant to both sides of his life was a healthy fear of the Grand Alliance. But he isn’t fond of the sea, speaks English well enough, and tries to find employment at the shipyard, which is far less cared for than Seville’s. The buildings are all a thin metal frosted with rust, the docks’ wood splintered, and the machinery shivers in the wind, creaking alarmingly. At ten, the majority of Juan’s practical lessons have been about upkeep, and he can’t help but be insulted that a navy with wharfs this poorly maintained claims to be the best in world.

The shipyard’s master is a short man with squinted, dark eyes and pale hair, wearing a sweat-stained shirt stretched too tight around his thick waist. “You’re a Spaniard,” he says when Juan comes looking for work on his second morning, unwilling after one night to sleep again in the open. He’s got a quick mind and fast feet, but there’s a lilting lisp to his voice meant for somewhere much more beautiful than the foggy, grey, brick-built infrastructure the British call Billingsgate. “No work for you here, lad. Go back to Madrid ‘fore you get yourself killed.”

“I’m from Seville,” he says, irritated. “I trained in San Telmo.”

“And I’m part of the Royal Navy,” the shipmaster says, and knocks Juan up the side of the head. “Out with you. I don’t want to see you near the Pool again.”

His head still hurts when he leaves. On the streets, he gathers looks from locals, drawing their gazes with the ill-fitted clothes he stole from the last ship’s cabin boy, his sun-soaked skin, and bright, bright blue eyes. The city’s color scheme is limited and dull, a stark contrast to home, and when the February sun shines, it’s so cold and weak that he feels as though he hasn’t seen true light in days. Even the sea and the Thames are colorless, unlike the crisp green-blue of Mediterranean or Guadalquivir, and the shipyards smell of decaying fish without the thick veil of flowers to help disguise it.

It’s no wonder people here are so cheerless, he thinks a fortnight in, hiding in the shadow of an alley as he tries to find a target to pickpocket. I never should have left.

He learned to steal at a young age, when his father first caught the Grippe. At the time, his sister was just two, growing frail from their steadily shrinking supper. “ _Me ayuda_ , _hermano,_ ” she said with eyes turned blue as the midday, summer river from weak tears. The grocer he stole from beat him until he felt as though his ribs had snapped into his lungs, but he managed to get the food home.

By the time his father and sister were dead, and his mother, an absent flamenco dancer, sent him to San Telmo with a half-lie that she was stranger, he could steal from anyone from the baker to the clerk without a care. Though out of practice, London has more shadows to hide in—he doesn’t manage to get much, but he gets enough. It should be this gets him chased, pickpocketing the wrong person or snagging a loaf of bread from the wrong stall. Trouble finds him instead when he’s in a dimly lit alley hours after stealing the purse of a rich woman, counting his prize in Spanish without thinking of the consequences.

The other boys find him when he reaches _venti-cinco._ One says something to the other, accent too thick for Juan to understand after just three weeks here, but their intent is clear. He runs, taking off down the narrow, twisting alleys as day fades to dusk, the two close behind. At some point, he loses the money, but he also loses the others, or so he thinks. But they’re natives of these streets while he’s just a stranger, knowing them as well as he knows home, and they catch him from the side with the help of a shortcut.

Though they’re by an entrance of a street, there’s no one around, and Juan knows adults wouldn’t care about a scuffle between boys even if they were. “Get off,” he says, struggling even as the bigger one gets his hand in his curls. He hasn’t done anything to either of them, but he’s _Spanish_ , and they’re at _war._

“You’re a thief,” the other says. They both have five years on Juan, give or take a few, and though he’s quick, he’s not very strong; they pin him back so he scrapes himself against the brick alley wall. “That money ain’t yours. Give it here.”

“Don’t have any money,” Juan says, which is true, and then tries to punch the skinnier one with the white pockmarked, pig-like face when he rifles through his pockets. In return, the boy hits him, and pain bursts around Juan’s left eye. He squeaks, and says, without thinking, “ _Para!_ ”

Suddenly, from the direction of the street, there’s the click-clack of horse hooves and the screech of carriage wheels. The boys freeze, the parts of their faces not cast in shadow even paler than before with their eyes wide. Juan shakes as the larger one releases his hair and they both step away—one step, then two, and then they run.

He means to as well, but his knee hurts from where it hit the wall, as well as his elbow and back, and his eye’s already well. In just a moment, a woman’s in front of him, her dress a pale blue and finely spun from silk, held out by a hoop. Her hair’s pinned back with a feather in her bun. At her side is a man in a naval uniform, hovering, his mouth set in a line stern enough to rival her smile.

“ _Hola_ ,” she says in accented Spanish. “ _Mi nombre es Miranda. Dónde vive?_ ” When he hesitates a moment too long, not knowing the city enough to lie, her smile falters and she continues, “ _Ven con nosotros. Yo tengo medico privado_.”

“Miranda,” the man says, tone sharp, but Juan’s already accepted her silk-gloved hand.

It’s been weeks since he had a roof to sleep under, and even longer since he had a real bed to sleep on. “I’m John Silver,” he says when the man—James McGraw—asks, already resigned to the idea of the ragamuffin boy coming along. “John Silver” is awkward his mouth, spoken with a Castilian lisp and drawn out _e_ for the English _i_ , but it’s the translated form of his name. Proper English, a way to fit into dreary London, and maybe even a way to leave Seville behind.

 

 

Miranda’s husband is Thomas, not James, like Juan thought, and their last name is Hamilton. After their private physician bandages his cuts and rubs ointment into his bruises, Miranda sets up a bath for him and finds him a servant boy’s clothes to wear with an apology that they don’t have anything else that fits him, as though he’s ever worn nicer in his life.

Though he expects them to insist he leave, they don’t. Even James McGraw, who clearly had reservations about him at first, doesn’t say he should. “How did you get to London?” he asks on the first morning when Juan—no, _John_ —joins him in the eggshell colored kitchen for a bowl of porridge. He hasn’t eaten anything of substance since his father died, realistically, and can’t imagine eating anything richer than this. “It wasn’t long ago.”

Lieutenant McGraw says it as a fact, without room for argument. John keeps his eyes down and swirls his spoon around the bowl, still marveling that he hasn’t had to steal or beg for this. “Took a ship,” he says to his breakfast. The bowl’s clay and grey, like seemingly everything in London, and the table a thick, solid, dark wood. Across the back wall are cabinets above marble counters and a sink, which is below a tightly shut window with its lace curtains drawn open, that both stop at the glass door tucked in the corner. “Didn’t mean to come. It was an—an—”

“Accident?” He nods. “I wouldn’t have thought Spanish children could sail to London by accident.”

“I’m s _evillano_ ,” Juan says with a frown. “Grew up in the Royal College of San Telmo. It was, uh, _instrucción._ I went on the wrong ship.”

It would take too long to explain about the Spanish Netherlands, or that he never wanted to be a sailor and grew so tired of the sea that he thought after one short voyage as a stowaway, he might find somewhere that he would never have sail again. Unfortunately, English naval lieutenants know about El Real Colegio de San Telmo, and James McGraw seems almost impressed. He’s out of uniform, dressed casually in breeches and a white shirt with a ribbon that must be Lady Hamilton’s holding back his light red hair.

“A born sailor then,” he says with a quirk of a smile. John shrugs. “How did you come to find yourself in trouble with those boys?”

“Went looking for work at the wharf,” John says, because he doesn’t know much about the layout of London, but he knows the port was close enough. He also knows when an adult is testing him, and he can’t say he was caught stealing. “They didn’t like my voice.”

McGraw sighs. “Ships will still sail to Spain on occasion,” he says. “If you would like to return, I can secure you passage. You’re welcome to stay until then. There isn’t much for a boy of your age to do around here, but you’ll heal better in a real bed.”

Though John can’t understand every word, he understands enough, though he doesn’t know how a man can extend an offer to stay in a house he doesn’t own. “Thank you, sir,” he says, but he doesn’t want to return. He has nothing to return to but a cot in an orphanage and a future he doesn’t care for. “I can read. If there are books. Also English and French.”

For a long moment, McGraw’s silent. Then he says, “Who were your parents?”

“A silversmith and a dancer,” John says, confused. “Why?”

“A silversmith’s son reads three languages?”

With another shrug, he says, “And some Portuguese.”

Again, McGraw’s quiet. “Well,” he says eventually. “There are certainly a good number of books.”

Señor Andres taught them _Don Quixote_ and _El Cantar de Mio Cid,_ along with other poets, speaking of Spanish literature with the same reverence that Padre Basilio spoke of scripture. He spoke less highly of Shakespeare, and said once, in English, “All British characters read the same. Sometimes I think they war against us because they envy our art.”

“I’m sorry,” McGraw says suddenly, “for the treatment you’ve received here. London can be intolerant of differences among people. In wartime, that intolerance only worsens. You don’t need to worry about that in this house.”

Maybe Lady Hamilton’s maiden name is McGraw, and that’s why he can make decisions their household, John thinks. “Thank you,” he says, uncomfortable and unknowing how to reply, and adds, “sir,” again, because even orphan boys can be polite.

They finish their breakfast in silence. John only eats half the porridge, the amount twice that than San Telmo ever gave him, and McGraw doesn’t call him ungrateful for not clearing his bowl.

 

 

Two days stretches into two weeks, and no one says a word about John leaving again.

“The London streets are hardly safe for anyone if alone,” Miranda told him within the first few days when he walked with her down to the market. The bread here is harder, a disturbing number of vegetables pickled, and he hasn’t seen a healthy citrus fruit in over a month. “It’s better if you stay with us.”

He learned quickly that James isn’t Miranda’s brother, but Thomas’ partner, and they’re working on solving a political problem in the Colonies. Friends and politicians come and go throughout the day, dressed in fine clothes and powdered wigs. Though John isn’t allowed in the parlor where the meetings are held, he sits at the table for supper, where he watches the exchanges of ideas with interest. He doesn’t understand entirely the subject matter, but cares less for that and more about the conversation itself, fascinated by the easy way Thomas sways people’s opinions to align with his own.

In the orphanage, John was rarely ever in trouble once he learned how to tell a convincing lie. But what Thomas is doing isn’t lying—it’s something else entirely, and John knows after witnessing it once that it can be used as a way to survive as much as a way to inspire.

James contributes where he needs, adding notes about naval strategies, and Miranda doesn’t discuss more than pleasantries, though she’s always watching.  “It’s a very dangerous thing my husband and James are doing,” she tells John one night in the library when everyone’s left, and James and Thomas talk alone in the study upstairs. “There’s a colony of ours run rampant with corruption, and few people care to listen to plans for peace when war is easier.”

“England is fighting a war,” John says with a frown. He sits curled on the cushioned window seat, cold glass pressed against his back, with _Lees Contes des Fées_ shut on his lap. Across from him, Miranda reclines back on her long chair, her brown hair loose and dressed down into her casual wear. “It needs two?”

“War lines the pockets of the right people in Parliament,” Miranda says, brushing her hair away from her face. John’s frown deepens in confusion. “Oh—it’s a saying that means it makes them richer. James says it would never be a war that way that it is here in the European seas, but the men they’d be fighting aren’t as honorable as the Spanish navy.”

Though John’s learned about honor and virtue in his daily lessons and church, he doesn’t care for the concepts of them. Be virtuous to God, and prove your honor to your country, even unto death—but San Telmo’s number of residents nearly doubled between May of 1702 and December of 1704, when he left, as a result of the war. Even though he’s young, he knows there’s something wrong in that. He doesn’t want to die for Spain, or for anyone. James, who’d be sent to the Colonies to fight, shouldn’t have to die for England.

He keeps these thoughts to himself. Without entirely understanding why, he knows people aren’t meant to think like this. “Who are they?” he asks instead.

“ _Las piratas_ ,” she says with a small smile, one eyebrow quirked as if she’s admitting a secret.

In Seville, he never a saw pirate, though he heard enough about them, and when he stowed away, he was never attacked. But even in Spain, Blackbeard is the bedtime horror story of any child raised near a sea. “Oh,” he says, and is suitably impressed. “Are they _that_ bad?”

Smile growing, she says, dramatically, “Worse,” and entertains him with gruesome stories she’s had the displeasure of overhearing in the parlor, or so she claims. When she’s run out of words, she adds, “What do you plan to do once you’ve return to Spain, John?”

Her smile’s gone now. In the low burning, flickering candlelight, her skin’s pale as a corpse.

“Return to San Telmo,” he says, though he really intends to find a ship to New York Island, or possibly somewhere further north. “It’s where I live.” There’s another thought he keeps to himself, pushing it down so it shrinks, because he doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t like London, and he hasn’t cared about anyone in particular since his Irma died, but he likes the Hamilton’s and James McGraw.

“Of course,” Miranda says, and the conversation draws to a close until the following morning.

They’re all there at breakfast when he comes to the table, sipping tea and clearly very tired. He slips into his chair with a single “good morning,” but they don’t allow him to stay quiet, because Thomas says, “John, would you like to stay?”

Even James is smiling a small, encouraging smile, though he’s the one who said he’d organize John’s passage to Spain. John looks around to each of them, jitters spreading from his heart through the rest of his body and says, “Really?”

“We would love if you did,” Miranda says. “It would make us all very happy.”

Dazed, John agrees, and even allows her to kiss the top of his head without a word of protest.

 

 

Lord Hamilton comes three months after John does, and though everyone seems tense at the news of his visit, they host a party. It’s spring, and rains almost daily, turning London an even duller grey than it was when he first stepped onto the harbor. On the day Lord Hamilton arrives, the rain’s reduced to a fog-like drizzle, confining John inside so they need to meet immediately, and the man doesn’t make it a secret that he hates him instantly.

Though Markus, the butler, is by the door, Lord Hamilton tosses his coat to John. Before he can move, Markus snatches it away, cheeks pink, and Thomas says, “ _Father_ ,” in a low, sharp tone.

“And here I thought you kept him along as a servant,” his father says, his marveled surprised obviously fake, before exchanging pleasantries with his son, Miranda, and James.

John fidgets, mumbles the worst told lie of this life, and leaves.

After that, he makes himself invisible whenever Thomas’ father is around, and disappears altogether if he can. On the day of the party, he stays scarce, not wanting to embarrass the others, and hides away in the back garden. James is also gone, called last minute to a meeting with his superior. It’s chilly, the April evening wind whistling through the trees and bushes, sinking through John’s warm coat. Somewhere above him, a woodpecker knocks incessantly into a tree. The noise is distracting, and the only reason why he doesn’t hear the girl approaching, he tells himself.

She appears from between the dead flowering bushes, walking the stone path without a chaperone and not dressed much warmer than he is. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says in a high voice when she sees him, eyes wide. “I didn’t know anyone else was here.”

Though he’s been here for a few months now, he hasn’t met many children his own age, and never alone. She looks only a year or two younger than he is. “It’s all right,” he says quickly in his imitation of James’ accent. After agreeing to stay, John thought it would be in his best interest to learn how to sound English, and James is the easiest to mimic. “I wasn’t doing anything. I’m John.”

“I’m Abbie,” the girl says with a thin smile. Her hair’s as dark as his, but her skin as pale as any Englishwoman’s, and her eyes large and brown. “It’s very nice to meet you, John,” she adds, and curtsies.

He says, “It’s nice to meet you, Abbie,” because he knows that’s right. “Why are you outside?”

Her nose scrunches. “It smells like pipe smoke,” she says. “I don’t like the smell of pipe smoke. Why are you?”

In Spain, merchant inns by the harbor where he sometimes had to deliver messages stunk of cigars, which was worse. “Well,” he says, “it’s not raining for once.” He thinks he probably shouldn’t admit he’s hiding from Lord Hamilton.

“I don’t mind rain,” she says. “It happens so often. But it’s cold out. How can you stand it?”

Despite how long it’s been since he first came to England, he still hasn’t adjusted to the weather. Even so, he simply shrugs. “We can go inside,” he says, tucking his hands in his pockets. “The library will be empty.”

She brightens at mention of the library, her smile revealing missing front teeth. “Father says Lord and Lady Hamilton have the most impressive collection of books he’s ever seen,” she says, following close behind him as he leads her through the short, winding stone pathways. The garden isn’t very big—not like San Telmo’s, with its large fountain in the center and twisting path of rose bushes and lemon trees. “I can read to you, John.”

“All right,” he says, and wonders if it’s a common activity between English children. It’s not as though playing outside in the drizzling fog is comfortable.

When they reach the library, he’s disappointed to find it locked. He turns around and says, “Wait here. The key is just in the study.”

“Are you allowed in the study?” she asks, eyebrows raising in alarm.

“Yes?” he says, like it’s a question, confused as to why he _wouldn’t_ be allowed. He tells her again to wait, and slips off down the hall.

No one is supposed to be away from the parlor where the party is held, or so he assumes, but the door to the study’s cracked. A lantern light glows from inside, soft and pulsing, spilling in a thin, dim line across the soft hall carpet. He hesitates, thinking for a moment he should turn back, but his curiosity outweighs his wariness. Feet silent on the carpet, he sneaks closer, pressed against the wall to limit his shadow to a circle around his ankles, until he’s near enough to the doors to listen.

The first voice he hears is Lord Hamilton’s. “I’ve overlooked many of your decisions lately, Thomas,” he’s saying, “but this won’t look good. We’re at war.”

“He’s just a boy,” Thomas says, incredulous, and John’s heart leaps to settle in the back of his throat. “A sweet, intelligent boy. Not some spy.”

From his place against the wall, John can only see a sliver of the room—the shelves lined with thick, leather bound books, the corner of the dark wooden desk, the thick, green curtains—but both men are out of his range of sight. Lord Hamilton sighs, loud and long and patient, the way the headmaster of San Telmo would before chiding one of his wards, and says, “I know he’s not a _spy._ The boy’s situation is…unfortunate, but you needn’t solve the world’s problems. Send him home, or to one of the orphanages here in London.”

“I’m not sending John to any _orphanage_.”

“He’s not a dog, Thomas,” he says. “You can’t simply keep him without consequences.”

Suddenly, chair legs slide across the study carpet, and John sees Lord Hamilton’s back. His wig’s off, his hair underneath short and white, and he has his hands tucked behind his back. Before he can turn, John backs away until he’s down the hallway and around the corner.

Abbie’s still outside the library where he left her, sitting against the wall with the skirts of her fancy dress pulled tight down to her ankles. When she sees him, she stands up so quickly she nearly trips on the hem. “Did you get the key?” she says.

Shaking his head, he answers truthfully, “Lord Hamilton was inside. Discussing the war.”

Her shoulders drop. “Oh,” she says. “Everyone’s always talking about the war. Mother doesn’t like when Father mentions it.”

When King Charles II died and Leopold I marched on Milan, John was six. Seville heard of the attack in less than a fortnight, the news coming in through the harbor and spilling across the city. It worsened in 1702, when he was in San Telmo. The war for the Castilian throne has defined his life for years.

Now Lord Hamilton claims that John staying will keep Thomas, James, and Miranda from accomplishing what they want just because he, in some way, is a reminder of the war.

“Why?” he asks, because at least in the Spanish Netherlands, who ascended to the throne affected them as surely as it affected those in Spain. “It’s not her war.”

Abbie shrugs. “She says it’s very upsetting,” she answers. “Father’s involved after all. That means he’s in danger.”

“No, it doesn’t. He’s _English._ ”

“So are—” she starts, and then stops. “Are you Spanish?” She doesn’t seem hostile. Her posture’s lax, and her gaze curious. When he nods, an uncomfortable flutter of guilt in his chest, and she says, “You don’t seem like a spy.”

“I’m not a spy,” he says, accent creeping back into his voice. “The Hamilton’s—they just wanted to help. But _he_ wants to send me to an orphanage.”

He doesn’t need to specify who he means. With a frown, Abbie says, “But they beat children in orphanages. That’s what Mistress Brichler says.”

In San Telmo, the adults weren’t kind, but John learned how to avoid any punishment worse than going to bed without dinner. Even if he could repeat that in an orphanage here, he never wants to return to one of those places again. But he also doesn’t want to get the Hamilton’s or James in trouble with their friends, nor Parliament, so he says, “Will you help me leave? He’s returning home in the morning, and he’ll want—well, you can’t tell anyone.”

She nods, a short bob of her head, and rocks back on her heels. “I’m very good at keeping secrets,” she says, enthusiastic, and follows him close at his heel in the direct of his bedroom. “Do you know where you’ll go, John?”

Though he knows the location of different cities in England, he doesn’t know anything about their separate characters. “No,” he says, listening for the sound of anyone coming. Thankfully, even the servants are occupied with the party downstairs. The candles for the upstairs halls aren’t lit, but the windows are open, and the moon casts enough light across the floor for Abbie, who’s unused to the occasional decorative furniture piece, to avoid knocking into anything.

“You should go to Bristol,” she tells him in a loud whisper. “I hear it’s nice.”

“All right,” he says, because he doesn’t imagine he’ll get a better suggestion, and falls quiet until they reach his room.

He packs a small rucksack of clothing, not bothering to fold them, and, after a moment’s hesitation, the copy of _Lees Contes des Fées_ Miranda gave him. Abbie acts as his look out, and continues to do so as they travel down the servant’s stairs into the kitchens, and out the back entrance.

Before he can walk away, she grabs his hand, pressing coins into his palms. “Father gives me an allowance every week,” she says as he goes to protest. “I’ll tell him I lost it. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” he says, knowing he doesn’t have time to argue. “Bye, Abbie.”

Then he slips alone out the door into the garden, through the fence, and into the dark London streets.

 

 

“Got news my father died out at sea,” John tells innkeepers or rich folk with carriages to earn places to sleep or rides on his way to Bristol without having to pay. “Part of the Royal Navy, he was. Mother died years ago—but I’ve got an uncle who said he’d take me in, if I made it down. Just I got no money.”

It takes a month to reach Bristol. Abbie’s money, as a child’s allowance, runs out quickly, though he never spends it on more than food. The city’s no different than London, brick and foggy grey and stinking of mildew and vinegar. On his first night, he sleeps beneath the steps of the Spy Glass, a small tavern, and steal’s a bowl of servant’s gruel in the morning for breakfast. A mangy orange cat slides through the same opening he used and meows softly, brushing against his ankles. The gruel settles like a rock in his stomach, and he pets behind the cat’s ear absently. Next time he needs to quickly decide on a place to go, he isn’t going to listen to a nobleman’s daughter who’s never even been outside of her own neighborhood.

If he’s going to survive Bristol, he’s going to need a better home than under the stairs of a tavern with only a cat as company, and if he can’t find a way, then he’ll hop ship again. In Seville, there were roaming gangs of children comprised of boys and girls who didn’t fit the requirements for any of the local orphanages. Inevitably, in a place as cheerless as this, there needs to be a similar organization. He just needs to find them.

A week later, he pickpockets the Constable without catching the attention of other adults in the area. Arthur, a boy not much older than he is with a chubby face but body stick thin and hair like a ripe lemon, drags John off the street and into an alley not a block away, and brings him to the hideout near the butcher’s district.

“My name’s John Silver,” he tells the leader, who sits slouched in a moth bitten, purple armchair like it’s his throne. “I’m from London.”

The leader’s a boy of ten and five named Finley, who has a splash of irritated red and white dots across his pinched, oily face. In the half light created by the dirtied windows filtering the noontime sun, he looks like he’s frowning, though he’s not. “John Silver?” he says in a higher voice than he should have at his age. “The fuck kind of name is that?”

Around the wide room, a few other children laugh, but only politely. John says, “A good one. What kind of name is _Finley?_ ”

“Mine, that’s what,” Finley says. “How come a kid who can steal off a constable speaks all proper?”

“Thieving’s not so easy in London,” John says, though he hadn’t stolen much in London at all, so he might be wrong, and there’s always the chance someone knows it. “Blending in helps. But my friend—partner—died, you see. I thought a change of scenery was due.”

“You’re lucky you found us then,” Arthur says, clapping John on the shoulder. “Kids small as you don’t last long ‘round here on their own. We’re keeping him, ain’t we, Fin?”

 _He’s not a dog_ , Lord Hamilton said, but in that moment, John feels an awful lot like a stray mutt.

Finley watches him, grey eyes squinted, suspicious, before his thin mouth splits into a smile like someone tore his shut lips apart. “We don’t want to be hasty with strangers, Art,” he says. His middle teeth are gaped, two of his bottom twisted, and more than one chipped. “You don’t look like nothing special, Silver,” he continues. “How’d we know nicking the purse of Constable Abbott ain’t just dumb luck?”

There’s no time to think of a good, bland lie, nor can he give the truth. “Because I had a better teacher than any of you here,” he says as he scrambles to make up something so fantastical it puts bland to shame. Finley’s smile fades, twisting down into a scowl. “My father was Henry Every’s quartermaster, and he taught me everything he know about thieving ‘til Lord Proprietor Hamilton’s men found him.”

During John’s three months with the Hamilton’s, he learned about pirates and individual captains, whether dead or alive. A murmur ripples through the onlookers, and when Finley claims John’s lying, he says, “Believe it or don’t believe it. That’s your choice. But I’m still going to need a roof to sleep under, and this is a good enough spot. If you want proof, I can stop the best ship in that harbor from taking sail by morning.”

“You’re shitting us,” a girl says from her place on the floor cushions near the back wall. She looks about Finley’s age, with blonde curls and a whore’s dress. “How’d you do that?”

“Cut the _estay_ ,” John answers, because he doesn’t know the English name for many of the components of a ship. But the other children know nothing of sailing at all, and don’t notice his Spanish. “It’s standing rigging.  It controls the top sail and the main sail. Without it, the ship can’t sail until they fix it. To stop it from sailing permanently—well, you’d have to burn it and keep it burning until there’s nothing left.”

“I still say you’re lying,” Finley says, but the smile’s returned, and more genuinely, “but I’ll give you a chance. Welcome to Bristol, Silver.”

It’s so final, the way he says it, that even as they shake hands, John’s already thinking of where he can go next.

 

 

John stays because of the cat.

“That thing’s possessed,” Solomon Little said after John’s first week, hand to his mouth where she’d scratched his already exaggerated scar. John had gone back for her after his place among the other children was secure, scooping her out from under the stairs of the tavern and carrying her down the docks where he cleaned her with seawater and accepted her abuse. “We should kill her before she bites the Devil into us.”

“Shut up, Sol,” Catherine, a girl about Abbie’s age with red hair, says as John holds his spitting, hissing, angry street cat closer to his chest. “Let the new boy have his friend. ‘Sides, everyone knows that only happens with black cats.”

Despite Catherine’s defense, the cat doesn’t grow any friendlier if someone other than John tries to approach her, though she never seeks out a fight on her own. He names her Graciosa after a princess in the book Miranda gave him, and he’s quick to grow afraid of what will happen to her if he leaves. Very few of the other children hold any issue with him, but nearly all of them hate her. They’d likely hate him just as extension if he weren’t careful to make himself essential the moment he realized Little intended to make his life in Bristol more difficult than necessary.

Little’s control over the other children is steadfast, superseded only by Finley, who’s the oldest and therefore the most terrifying. Within a month, John brings in more money and goods than even Art. Within a year, he’s so far ahead of all of them in his earning’s that even Little’s afraid to touch him during his morning’s gossip address. And everyone knows better than to try and hurt Graciosa.

Today’s a Tuesday in the beginning of May, Bristol’s high society’s just received word of Britain’s defeat in the Battle of Almansa, and the night air’s damp but clear. John crouches below the bottom window of a lord’s house, hidden from the full moon’s light by the shadow of a yew tree, with a rucksack slung over his back. The master of the house is a military man currently meeting in someone else’s parlor about Spain’s victory. Though his wife’s home, she’s already tucked away in her room. The servants are similarly already in their wing, leaving both the study and the kitchens open.

He waits until the curtains to the bedroom close, and then jiggles the latch of the windows open with a pocket knife. Prying them towards him is a struggle, because they don’t push inwards, but he’s through soon enough. Like most houses of this size, the hall floors are carpeted, and he lands silently on the soft green rug. Two years have passed since he first came to Bristol, but he hasn’t grown much at all, and sneaks through the house with the same quiet ease he’s had since he was running along the slippery Sevillian docks.

For the past week he’s watched this house, memorizing schedules and the layout of the rooms. He goes to the study first, reaching it quickly, and opens the door just wide enough to squeeze inside to avoid any screech of the hinge. No sounds come, of course. Wealth invites burglary, but the wealthy also like their houses silent. At the Hamilton’s, he never thought to pay attention to whether or not they oiled their hinges. He thinks they probably didn’t. At least James must have known it was safer to leave them be.

After a moment, John’s eyes adjust. The room faces the garden rather than the street, so he feels safe cracking the curtains just enough to let in a sliver of moonlight. It’s a standard study, with a cushioned window seat, a large wooden desk likely imported from mainland Europe or the colonies, and bookshelf running from floor to ceiling on the left wall. Finding the safe is depressingly simple; it’s locked in the bottom cabinet of the desk opened by a key found in a thick text written in a language he doesn’t recognize. He discovers that on the third try, as it’s one of the few books not coated in dust, and on the fourth try finds the key for the tall, narrow safe inside something called _The Prince._

Even the contents of the safe are standard—jewelry, signed papers, and most importantly, a purse containing more guineas than John cares to count while in a rush. He leaves the rest and locks the safe before placing it back in the drawer, which he also locks, and then returns the keys to their proper places. Before leaving, he does a last pass of the room, not looking terribly closely, and takes a couple of the spare quills, thinking Graciosa might like them if he snapped off their pointed ends.

Studies are easy. It’s the kitchens that’s the hard part of any burglary, but he has to split his spoils with the group, so rucksack full of food is better than a couple of apples from the market. He uses the main staircase, which is furthest from both the servant’s quarters and the master’s bedroom, and takes off his shoes before braving the wooden floor. Twice the floorboards creak, but not loudly, and he reaches the kitchens without, for once, needing to find somewhere to hide.

When he first began robbing houses, he used to feel guilty stealing food, but that’s disappeared by now. He takes the morning’s bread first from right off the table, slipping it into the rucksack, and adds a glass jar of milk, a few eggs he winds in a dish cloth, and a small basket of plums. As usual, he ignores the pickled vegetables and capers his fellows orphans often requested, and cinches the rucksack shut. Then he unlocks the back door and steps out into the garden, unseen and unheard, and alone.

 

 

One chilly spring night in the year John’s ten and three, he returns to the hideaway with a rucksack of spoils to find Graciosa gutted like a rat. Her tongue lolls from her mouth, and her yellow eyes still catch the moonlight, watching the feet of her onlookers. Blood spills across his quilt from her gash. Her orange fur looks as ragged as the day he found her.

It was the new boy who did it, a yellow haired Bristol orphan twice as tall as John with small eyes as dark as his curls. Finley, who was smart enough to never go near the cat and therefore never minded her, has already knocked the boy flat to the ground by the time John arrives. No one notices him when he does, too enthralled by the dead animal and the subsequent punishment. No one notices when he slips away.

He reaches the port by sunrise, where he’s quick to search out a merchant preparing to leave. “My name’s John Silver,” he says after rapidly delivering enough information on ship maintenance that the man agrees to listen to him. The merchant’s name is Captain George March, he sells guns and their powder, and his nose is crooked like he broke it multiple times. “I’m ten and four. Old enough to be a cabin boy.”

“You certainly know about sailing,” Captain March says, and looks John over from his head to his feet, expression weary. He knows how he appears, with his clothes ill-fitting, his body too thin, and the dirt smudged beneath his eye. “Where are you from?”

“London,” he says, and repeats the lie he told to get to Bristol. Then he adds, “But my uncle’s dead, you see. The innkeeper’s wife at the Spy Glass told me, sir—Captain. Died of the Grippe. I’ve got the last of his money and some food she gave me, but that’s all, Captain. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

The man sighs, and runs a hand down his face. “You certainly know about sailing,” he repeats. “I try not to make it a habit of signing on strangers. Ten and four, you say?” John nods. Again, Captain March sighs. “We’re going to New York. It’s a long journey. My old cabin boy works for me now as a seaman. He can train you. Is there anything else?”

“I speak French and Spanish,” John says, relief loosening the knot of tension in his spine. “A little Portuguese. I can read them all too.”

Captain March shakes his head. “Such a shame,” he says, though he doesn’t specify what’s so regretful. “Come. I’ll show you aboard to the laundry. I refuse to let any member of my crew sail in clothes as dirty as yours.”

As he places his hands between John’s shoulder blades, leading him in the direction of the ship, two alley cats screech at one another from between a row of cargo crates. It’s drizzling, dampening his clothes and flattening his curls, and though he has to go back to the sea for this, at least he’s leaving the English shore.

 

 

Though the English don’t trade much with the Spanish or French in Europe, they still do in the Colonies. John’s in New York just a few days when he uses this to advantage, and makes himself so useful to the docks’ master at Pearl Street that the man buys his services off Captain March at a higher price than any orphan is worth.

“If you’re really ten and four, I’ll eat my hat,” Master Collins, who isn’t wearing a hat, says when they meet. John’s wearing clothes that fit him, and looks healthier than he has in a long time after so many weeks’ exposure to the summer sun aboard the deck of the ship. “If March wants to believe it, that’s his business, but no one wants to be a cabin boy for two years. I’ll get you meals and a roof over your head if you work for me instead.”

Merchants and ship captains met with Collins in the tavern closest to the port, conducting business about docking their ships or trading over a bit to eat and drink. Collins speaks a meager amount of French, but no Spanish and Portuguese, and John’s quick to insert himself between two men conducting business as the most reliable translator in the area. Captain March lets go of him reluctantly, but John’s just glad to have a reason to stay on dry land for a while.

Though John’s far from the only translator on New York Island, he’s ironically the most trustworthy, and soon goes on loan to men other than Collins. Franklin, an Irish carpenter who works repairing the docks, claims it’s because John’s young. “They take one look at your girly curls,” Franklyn says to John, whose curls are made even curlier by the mid-July heat, after he negotiates a deal between Collins and a sugar merchant, “and think you’re some kind of innocent babe, those poor bastards.” He mops sweat from his brow with an old, dirty white cloth, and readjusts his position on the barrels of gunpowder where he sits next to George the Shipwright.

“Are you implying I’d lie?” John says, leaning back against the wall of the warehouse and watching sailors scurry around the pier, carrying cargo or calling out to shipmates. The sun spills across the island from the cloudless sky, a spot of yellow in a plane of deep blue that reflects in the restless sea. It’s just past noon, and he only popped back here long enough to get a look at a spice merchant from Portugal whose business he’ll be handling later tonight. “I’m offended, Mr. O’Malley.”

George grunts, an unpleasant sound made worse by years of cigar smoke tearing at his throat. “He’s not saying it’s a bad thing,” he says, pushing up his sleeves. They’re all dressed the same, in brown breeches and white shirts, but John, who’s grown since Bristol but remains thin as a reed, is the only one whose don’t fit. “Fuckers deserve to be swindled out of their money every once in awhile. Problem’s that you’re doing it for Collins.”

A gull swoops down, snapping a wriggling fish in an open net up with its beak before flying away. Shrugging, John says, “It’s a living.” He’s not really offended, as their comments are more good natured teasing than true judgment of his character.

“So’s whoring,” George says, watching a cabin boy try to swat another two gulls away from the net with a long wooden broom.

“Silver’d make a shit whore,” Franklin says. “He talks too much. Yeah, it’s a living, but sailing’s an honest one. Which one’s losing money tonight? Guns or Collins?”

It took just a month for John to realize Collins is a terrible businessman, and that if he kept getting the better end of deals, his patrons would realize the new translator was manipulating the situation. To keep the man’s reputation intact, John loses him money half as often as he makes it, which might be the only reason the other dock workers like him. “Guns,” he answers as the Portuguese merchant steps from his ship, dressed down as casually as any ordinary soldier because of the heat. John hasn’t experienced weather like this since he left Seville. “Collins lost the fruit merchant from Florida. Besides,” he adds, “I think the soldiers that are here have enough arms to last them a war.”

Franklin rolls his shoulders and says, “Guns are going out regardless of who gets the better deal, boy. Portugal just won’t be getting the money for it.”

“Instead it goes to the Missus,” George says, and pulls a cigar and matches from his pocket.

“Fuck her,” Franklin says as George strikes a match and lights his cigar, the smoke floating near invisible through the bright air. John scrunches his noses in protest, the smell of it gratingly acrid. “Fuck Collins. You should put that silver tongue of yours to good use one day and get us better pay, Silver. They can afford it.”

As the gun merchant calls out for his quartermaster, the afternoon bell clangs, signaling the change in shifts. Franklin stands first, stretching like a cat so his back pops before glancing at George. “Get up, Mason,” he says, running his fingers through his straight black and grey hair. “Leave Silvertongue to his money making for the rich.”

John doesn’t care who’s he making money for as long as it gets him dinner and a place to sleep. As George stands as well, cigar smoking and sticking between his cracked, thick lips, John thinks that anyone who doesn’t understand that must not know what it’s like to spend the night beneath a tavern’s front steps with no one but a stray cat for company.

“Careful, Silver,” George says, and musses John’s hair before retreating after his friend.

 

 

In the summer of 1710, when John’s ten and five, he negotiates a deal between a fur merchant from Quebec and a local tailor. The merchant’s name is Jacques Sinclair, his hair’s redder than James’ and twice as long, and after Mr. Sterling’s left, he invites John to stay awhile. “ _Vous ne regardez pas un Anglais_ ,” he says after a long sip of ale. “ _Qu'cest que-vous êtes français?”_

“ _Non_ ,” John answers, and grins. This summer’s even hotter than his first year, and his skin’s tanned as dark as it was when he still pretended he was a Spanish naval officer fighting the war on the bank of the Guadalquivir. “ _Mais vous pouvez toujours appelez-moi Argent. Si vous voulez._ ”

For the rest of the night, Sinclair calls him Argent, and says, before John leaves, that the company is always looking for able-bodied Frenchmen to join, _si tu veux._ They’ve already established John is Spanish, and his name is Plata, if they’re to be honest with one another, but Sinclair seems to be about his age. It’s not difficult to guess he must be the youngest in the company, and wants a friend. If it weren’t so cold in Quebec, John might consider, because he’s already grown bored with New York and its residents and his home at the port. Unlike Bristol, he’s made allies among the men he lives with, if not friends, and the idea of starting the process again while also learning a new trade in the dead of winter is far from appealing.

The _voyageurs_ are there a week, and he acts as their translator for actions more mundane than business negotiations more than once. On the night before they leave, he meets with a rum merchant operating from the Spanish West Indies, Collins, and tea merchant from Bristol. Señor Fernandez _clearly_ understands English, but pretends he doesn’t know a word of it. John’s happy to play along, talking to him of developments in Seville while negotiating a failure for his employer and Captain Hester. He’s too distracted to notice at first the suspicious way Hester watches him, dark eyes trained intently on his face, until he says, “Mr. Fernandez here claims he needs higher compensation for the rum because of the price of his ship’s defenses against piracy.”

“You would know a thing or two about that, wouldn’t you?” Hester says suddenly, bitterly, lowering his pipe from his mouth. In the dull light of the oil lamp in the center of the round table, his blue eyes look as colorless as fogged glass. “Dear Lord. Everyone thought you’d died and yet here you are, making an honest living in the Colonies.”

For a moment, no one at the table speaks, and John rushes to find anything familiar in the man’s face. “I’m sorry,” he says finally, relieved to see there’s nothing. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I don’t know you.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” the man says with a frown. His blonde hair’s thinning, pulling back in a severe triangle at his temples, and crow’s feet extend from his eyes in spindly lines. “But John Silver—now, that’s not a name one commonly hears, especially in rumors. One of Finley’s boys, I heard you were. The only street rat brave enough to go after more than our pockets.”

“I’m sorry,” John says again even as his heart jumps. Neither Collins nor Fernandez speak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was a cabin boy on Captain March’s ship before I came here. A sailor’s son from London.”

Hester shakes his head, and his frown deepens. “You think you were so clever no one ever caught a glimpse of you?” he says. “Black curls, blue eyes. Looks a bit Spanish, they said. The Constable learned to ask about you whenever we caught one of Finley’s boys. It was one of them who said you were dead. Same one said you were the son of Henry Every’s quartermaster.”

With a loud laugh, Fernandez says, “ _No parece como una pirata._ ”

“A pirate’s son?” Collins says. His disbelieving smile is frozen on him forcefully, caving dimples into his cheeks. “Silver here’s no pirate. He’s an honest London boy.”

“ _Porque no soy_ ,” Silver tells Fernandez, who’s the only one to still look amused at the table, before returning his attention to the Englishman. “I must say, the similarity is there, but I’m not the only black haired boy with blue eyes in Britain. Never been told I look Spanish before. I’m French on my mother’s side.”

Until earlier this week, John never been mistaken for French before, but Hester furrows his brow. “Oh,” he says, voice suddenly gruff. “Yes. I suppose the look is—common. The name was just…startling. I hope you understand.”

Though he sounded embarrassed, the way he watches John remains calculating for the remainder of the negotiation. Collins is a shit businessman, but shrewd in observation, and notices as surely as John does. Even Fernandez grows subdued as the night goes on, and after he and Hester leave the tavern for their ships, Collins turns to John and says, “Is there something you should be telling me, boy?”

Collins hasn’t called John “boy” since he was ten and three. “Do you truly think the son of Henry Every’s quartermaster would be literate?” he says, indignant to be doubted after two years because of a man Collins knew for a matter of hours. “Or that I could lie about this for so long? If you’re asking why I never mentioned my mother, Master Collins, then the answer is simple. France is allied with Spain. I learned not to say anything at a young age.”

“Gossip travels quick around here,” he says, standing, one hand gripping the back of his chair so tightly his knuckles are white. “You’re going to be bad for business before the week’s up whether it’s true or not. I want you gone before that happens.”

“What?” John says, startled, because he’s run away from Spain and the Netherlands and England and the sea, but he’s never been told to leave. “What are you going to do without me?” he adds before Collins can answer. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I got along well enough before you came along,” he says as, out of the corner his eye, John sees a few of the voyageurs look their way. The heat of the tavern’s suffocating in a way it wasn’t moments earlier. “I can do it again. As for you? Frankly, Silver, I don’t fucking care.”

I should have stayed in Seville, John thinks abruptly, acutely aware that the only people who have given a damn about him since were an English noble family who he was liability for, and a cat another boy murdered. After Collins leaves, weaving through the other patrons and out through the propped open front door, John pushes back his chair and goes to the voyageurs. Sinclair grins, and none of the other four look surprised.

“ _Je veux venir_ ,” John says, tucking his hands in the pockets of his breeches, and looking each man in the eye individually.

Quebec is the furthest from the sea he’ll have ever been. It’s not his ideal option for where to go next, but it’s the only one he has.

 

 

When John arrives with Jacque and the others to Quebec, it’s late autumn and he’s a few weeks from ten and six. There’s already a thick layer of snow on the ground, and when he climbs off his horse, he sinks nearly to his knees.

Florian, the leader of the company, laughs loudly at John’s look of pinched displeasure, and says he’ll grow used to it in time. He says he has a way to stave off the cold for the first night, and hours later, Jacque shoves John through the doors of a room in a brothel. At ten and five, he’s never had sex before, and it isn’t until the whore—a pretty woman barely older than he is with all her teeth and skin like milk—has her hands on the buttons of his coat that he realizes he doesn’t care. There’s a fire blazing bright and warm in the hearth, heating the room so John’s burning in his thick pants and thick sweater and fur lined boots, and Coralie’s not chilled in her thin, revealing blue dress, but he finds he’s not any more comfortable removing his clothes.

Her hands stop when they’re already fisted in his shirt. “Am I not to your liking?” she asks in thickly accented English.

Face flushing with unfamiliar embarrassment, he answers, “No, it’s not that, it’s just—”

“Oh,” she says, eyes widening, the firelight bringing out the green flakes in their bleak brown. “Do you prefer the company of—”

“No,” he says too quickly, attempting to create an explanation to something he’s never spared a thought to before, and eventually settles with, “I don’t like anyone.”

As he’s grown older, he’s acknowledged when a woman’s beautiful, and even when a man’s handsome, but has never _wanted_ anyone the way he’s heard other men talk about wanting wives or whores. Coralie nods, smiles small and sympathetic, and pulls him towards the bed. “Even those who don’t care like touch once in awhile,” she says as she tugs his shirt over his head, and a fluttering panic builds in his chest like he was just caught in a lie, “and I do not receive payment unless you enjoy yourself, _Monsieur_. Let me.”

It’s not often that John cares about normality, but he’s aware on an almost subconscious level that there’s something _wrong_ in not wanting anyone. For a moment, he remembers Irma with her pale hair and sunburn on her cheeks telling him the Misericordia Brotherhood tucked away a dowry for her already, and how his first reaction was to ask if that meant if they could still marry when they were older. A tobacco merchant’s daughter made him blush when she kissed him at ten and three. In Bristol, he wanted to talk to Catherine more than he did after she caught his attention by defending Graciosa. _Liking_ people isn’t the issue; it’s just that he doesn’t _want_ them.

Before he can tell Coralie that he’s a very good liar, and he has no issue telling his new friends whatever was necessary to see her well compensated, she’s already working on the rest of his clothes. “Relax,” she says, voice sweet as a nightingale as she leans close. Her breasts press against his chest. Her hair falls in two blonde sheets to either side of his face. “We can both enjoy this.”

 _This_ does happen to be enjoyable, once Coralie ignores his protests—enough that he won’t protest again if the situation calls for it, but not enough that he’ll seek out a brothel on his own. She laughs at one point, breathless with her hair sticking to a crack in the corner of her red painted mouth, and says, “I’ll give you a discount when you come back,” as though she’s fixed him of some terrible mistake.

After they’re finished, he dresses quickly, and leaves without saying goodbye.

 

 

Jacques calls John “Argent” and “ _mon ami_ ,” and teaches him to use a musket to shoot game, and then how to use a knife to skin them, and finally cook what’s left. “ _Tu es bon_ , Argent,” Jacques says the first time John does every step himself despite how severely his hands shake in his mittens. “ _Il est bon que vous veniez_.”

It’s so cold John’s ears and nose are perpetually red, and his body’s gone numb beneath his thick winter clothes. Though he thought winters in Bristol and London were unbearable, they were nothing compared to the snowy nights of the boreal forests he now calls home. “ _Moi aussi_ ,” he says, which is only half a lie. At ten and six, he’s small and slight, and the arctic wind whips through him sharply, as though each gust were a blade’s physical cut.

By the time he’s ten and seven, he can shoot as well as any of them, and is just as acclimated to the weather. He spends his birthday on the raised roots of a tree, crouching to avoid the snow, with his rifle laid across his knees. The air’s crisp, frigid in his lungs and bright with the smell of pine and nearby wood smoke. Above him is an evergreen too tall to climb and far, far beyond that, the aurora borealis shimmers across the clear night sky, glinting green and blue and rose pink off the snow. It’s beautiful here in a desolate sort of way, drastically different from the warm comfort of Seville or the dirty bleakness of England, but that isn’t enough for him to like it.

He appreciates the company of Jacques and the others well enough, but even after a year and some months, killing game leaves him nauseous. Ever since he was a child, he’s hated _being_ in pain, but making his life by shooting animals quickly proves how much he hates watching others be in pain as well. It doesn’t seem to matter whether or not they’re human.

Many of the streams in the area have already frozen over for the winter, but the one by his side is still churning, bubbling merrily as it winds between fallen pine needles and ice slicked rocks. John isn’t hunting any animal in particular; most game in this area of the forest have to come to this stream to drink, and he and a few of the others are posted up and down its banks. They catch what they catch, and then trade it to the separate Algonquin tribes, whose language he knows just enough of to communicate business with now, or later in the year to the English and Spanish. Last summer, John went to San Diego rather than New York or Boston, reluctant to return to British territory.

There’s a rustle in a holly bush ten paces to his right, raining down green leaves and bright red berries. He lifts his rifle, already loaded, bracing it against his shoulder, and waits.

Out walks a vixen, treading lightly over the snow so she leaves small paw prints to mark her trail. She doesn’t notice him where he’s hidden in the shadow of the evergreen, stopping right at the water’s edge. She bows her neck to lap at the stream. Her ears tip forward like a cat. Her fur glows the color of rust under the shifting hues of the aurora.

John hesitates, and then lowers his rifle. When he speaks, people tend to believe him, and there’s little reason for the men to doubt the simple lie that nothing crossed his path.

 

 

One morning in the late November of 1713, Florian announces to the company over breakfast that a messenger arrived from Detroit demanding assistance at Fort Pontchartrain against the Fox tribes.

The company answers the news with silence. John stares at his bowl of corn mush, unseeing, as Jacques says quietly in dismay, “ _Je ne veux pas aller._ ” They’d just reached Fort Chambly where they planned to winter, and no one appreciated the idea of leaving so soon.

With a sigh that travels across the stone hall, Florian says the order holds the royal seal, and therefore not his to contest. He says that they’d be fighting in defense of their countrymen, their King, but the men are already talking over him. Though he’s a good leader for a company of voyageurs, he doesn’t know how to convince them to die for honor. John could do it for him, if Florian asked him for help, because he’d learned from Thomas, who tried to convince people to live instead.

By the end of the meal, no one’s convinced, but no one’s arguing. Jacques says perhaps he’ll run away to somewhere warm, like New Orleans, but the suggestion’s forlorn and not at all serious. Then he looks at John and says, “ _J’aime ma mère_.” He says to tell her that, if John ever goes to Lille.

John’s already run from one war, and the moment he heard the news, planned to run from this as well, but he hadn’t thought anyone else would tell him to leave. He promises his friend he will, and that it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a place aboard a ship to France from a port along the coast.

“ _Merci_ ,” Jacques says, and, to John’s surprise, hugs him.

In Europe and across the Atlantic, King Philip V of Spain wages war against England and her allies even as they all talk peace, from what John’s heard. He likes Jacques as much as any friend should, and doesn’t take issue with any of the other men. For all their sakes’, he hopes the war they’re walking into doesn’t last for long.

 

 

“I was in Quebec hunting game with a company of French voyageurs,” John tells Anna, the innkeeper’s daughter, on his first night in Boston, “when Detroit called for aid against the Indian tribes who were going back on trade agreements.”

He spins a story about fending off an attack in the night, stealing details from a tale an Inuit boy called Tiriaq told him two winters past. Outside, snow falls steadily, and a cold wind rattles the window glass, creating a properly eerie atmosphere for a story of war. Anna watches him with large, dark eyes, uncaring or unknowing that the cloth holding back her bun is loose, leaving her brown hair to trail along either side of her face in uneven lines. By the time he reaches the point where he and Jacques had to hide an injured companion in a wolf’s den, he’s gathered a crowd of onlookers. Hichborn Inn isn’t terribly popular, which is why he chose it, and the patrons seem like locals—the callused hands of metalworkers and carpenters, and the weathered skin of outside laborers.

When he decides he’s told enough for the night, he yawns, and runs his fingers through his hair, the wool of his fingerless mittens causing the curls to static. “Well, we never did make it, clearly,” he says. Anna’s cold chapped lips part to speak, but snap shut without a word. “The few of us that were left planned to try, but I’m an Englishman, you see. Born on New York Island. Florian told me to get myself back to my family, but last I heard, my uncle settled up here in Clark’s Square. You wouldn’t happen to know a silversmith named Silver, would you, Miss Hichborn? I’m afraid I’ve wasted enough of your evening.”

“I’m the only silversmith this side of the Hill,” a man says from a table to the left of theirs, feet propped up and face half-hidden by a cap lined with beaver fur. Lucille, the Madame of the brothel in Quebec and the innkeeper’s wife, would have tossed him out the door herself had she seen a man’s boots on the table, but Anna’s father doesn’t seem to notice. He’s smoking with a couple soldiers two tables away, watching John with the rest of them. “Well, myself and my apprentice. I’m John Coney. The boy’s Johnny Gray.”

 “Oh,” Anna says as John intakes a sharp breath, and sags his shoulders in careful disappointment. “Do you know anyone else in Boston, Mr. Silver?”

Shaking his head, he says, “My Uncle Thomas is the only family I have left.  My father was a lieutenant in the navy, and he died in the war against Spain. Then my mother was killed one night after a performance, and my Aunt Miranda died in childbirth. It wouldn’t be as much of an issue if my earnings for this season hadn’t gone to the war effort instead of my pockets.”

“You can stay with us for the night,” Mr. Hichborn says from his place between the soldiers. Anna, who’s facing away from him, smiles giddily. “There are a few vacancies. I’ll let you forego payment if tell us how you survived that fight tomorrow night.”

In San Telmo, John read the story of the sailor Sinbad, and in London, he read from the first volume of _Les Mille et une Nuits_ , published in France not a year earlier. He came into Hichborn Inn with the intention to be Scheherazade to a collective Shahryar, but hadn’t expected it to work.

 “I can do that, Mr. Hichborn,” he says, relieved. “Thank you.”

Anna shows him to his room, holding an oil lantern high with one hand and her skirts up with the other as they climb the narrow, rickety stairs. The following evening, he completes his story for the same patrons as the night before and a few new faces, before starting on another he grows too tired to finish. Then it continues into the next night, and the night after that, the crowd increasing each time, and suddenly, losing John is also losing income.

“I can’t offer you payment,” Mr. Hichborn says, “but you’d get a place to stay and two meals a day in exchange for entertainment and help with some of the maintained. If that’s fair.”

Cheerfully, gratefully, John says that sounds fair enough, certainly, and Anna smiles at him over the rim her of her tea cup, sweet and crooked, and so honest that nearly feels guilty.

 

 

Juan’s six, and Mama kneels in front him outside the gates of El Real Colegio Seminario de San Telmo. There’s a shawl wound around her head, shadowing her face from the oil lamps on the high stone walls and hiding her dark curls. She wears no paint on her lips or eyes, nor rouge on her cheeks. Her dress is the same as the one she wore to Papa’s funeral, simple and black.

“ _Te amo, chiquito_ ,” she says with a smile, revealing front teeth that overlap one another. They look like each other—straight brows, thick curls, and unburnt olive skin. “ _R_ _ecuerdas lo que dije._ ”

“ _Mi nombre es Plata_ ,” he says, and she kisses his forehead, her bright blue eyes closed and lips cool against his feverish skin.

Then they hear a noise like a crash, and he turns away from her to watch a stone wall crumble under the assault of canon fire. When he looks back, she’s gone, and Irma’s in her place, her pale hair tied back with a ribbon the color of the summertime sea. “Win for England,” she says, and grins with her blood splattered mouth. “I have you.”

He wakes when she crumbles to the grass, covered by debris dust and drowning in the wedding dress the nuns of the orphanage made her funeral attire. An owl hoots outside the window, low and melodic like the announcement of tragedy, and the chilly spring breeze that drifts through the open shutters ruffles the newspaper he has weighed down by the wooden candle holder. Around him, the inn is silent, and the streets quiet of human noise as the residents of Boston sleep away their celebration or indifference.

Yesterday, the news reached the Colonies that the war was over, leaving Philip V the King of Spain, and most of Spain’s territory given over to other countries. John’s time away from Seville is about to eclipse his time in it, but he’s never felt a sense of lonely homelessness as keenly as he has today. He’s not British, and he’s not French, regardless of what languages he speaks. Maybe he’s nothing at all now, but he was _s_ _evillano_ first, and his first thought at the news was a bitter one that the Dutch wouldn’t be any happier with the Austrians than they were with the Spanish.

In the room next door, the English guest snores loud enough for John to hear through the thick wooden walls. Exhausted, he fumbles for the matches on the end table and strikes one, lighting the half melted candle to allow him a dim light to see by.

It’s early April now, but Boston’s so far north that a thin layer of snow still coats the ground. He doesn’t like the cold, and yet has spent the past four years living with it. Winter’s overstayed its welcome, and so has he—four months ago he arrived here and found himself a place at the inn as its storyteller, and Mr. Hichborn’s already hinting marriage. Seville’s not home anymore, but the war’s over. John can return to Spain, or perhaps go to France or Italy, or tolerate the sea for a little while longer and go somewhere entirely new where no one will expect him to fight for honor he doesn’t have, or marry an innkeeper’s sweet, honest daughter.  

Maybe he’ll go back to England, despite how much he hates it, to apologize to Miranda and Thomas for leaving, and see if James died out at sea.

He packs quickly and silently, throwing his belongings into the worn rucksack he got when he joined the company in Quebec. Though the sun isn’t up, the sky is lightening by the time he slips out the backdoor, and steals away to the port, as though he were twelve again, or ten, or even younger than that.

 

 

Though Captain Parrish’s itinerary ends in London, they stop first in Baltimore to careen and update the ship’s guns, and then sail to Havana. But Baltimore took a number of weeks, because Parrish doesn’t know how to captain his own damn ship, so it’s already winter 1715 by the time they reach the West Indies. The pirates attack at the end of January, three days after John turns twenty.

With a crack and a bang, the barred door bursts, sending wood dust up in a cloud to drift through the sun dappled room. A man steps through, as portly as the cook with sweat and dirt caught in the lines on his brow, his pistol drawn. Past him, past the doorway, other pirates loot sugar and tobacco and whatever else they can find, and a second taller, younger man, stands leaning against the wall, frown placed securely on his face. The cook lies dead on the floor, the cutlass he managed to fall into tip first buried so deep that in his chest that it looks like John killed him.

John smiles, relaxes his shoulders, and raises his hands in the universal sign of surrender. “The poor man couldn’t stand the thought of what you’d do to him,” he says conversationally, and steps delicately over the corpse. Blood is already pooling onto the wooden floors, staining the boards. The air’s heavy with the metallic smell of it and wood dust, the sunlight from the high window chasing away shadows to put everything on display. “I, on the other hand,” he continues, “very much want to join your crew. My name is John Silver, and I happen to be a very good cook.”

“Why would a cook want to join a pirate’s crew?” the man asks without moving the pistol, eyes travelling from John’s face to his short seaman’s jacket to his loose breeches a size too large. The ship rocks, and a barrel of gunpowder rolls out of the netting the real cook slashed during the fight.

“Well, I hold no love for Captain Parrish, as you can see,” John says, and drops his hands. The thin leather package he nicked off the cook rubs against his chest. “Don’t hold much love for England, either. I’d rather not die because I’m aboard a ship bearing her colors. Sadly, cooking is the only skill I can offer in exchange for a chance to get away from England.”

Finally, the man lowers his arm. “I’m Hal Gates,” he says. “Quartermaster of _The Walrus._ This here behind me is Billy Bones, our bosun. Where are you from, Silver?”

“London,” John says, because though it’s been years, the way he speaks English is still an imitation of James McGraw’s accent. “But I’ve got no one there if that’s what you’re asking, Mr. Gates.”

Mr. Gates turns to look at Billy Bones, who quirks a brow and shrugs one shoulder. Then Mr. Gates returns his attention to John and says, “We’ve been looking for a new cook, Silver. You’re hired.” Then he steps forward, wraps a large hand around John’s shoulder, and leads him out the door to the stairs and up onto the quarterdeck where half the crew is already dead.

On the day John becomes a pirate crew’s cook, the South Sea's reflecting the sunlight so intensely that the water looks like a thing living. Piracy isn’t his first career choice, regardless of how often he lied and said he was the son of Henry Every’s quartermaster, but there’s a package in his pocket that might be valuable enough to buy his way home, and in the meanwhile, at least the air is warm.

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to make Silver asexual in this because in the show, he has all of one sexual encounter in the first episode where Max even says he spent more time looking for the paper than actually paying attention. And also because I plan to have a sequel, and considering he knew Flint when he was ten, that would be creepy.


End file.
